May 24, 2011

Looking for answers down tornado alley The latest tornado in Missouri has experts asking why 2011 has spawned so many deadly storms, with many blasting through heavily populated areas. (By Brian Vastag and Ed O’Keefe)

Report tracks earnings among the majors Over a lifetime, the earnings of workers who have majored in engineering, computer science or business are as much as 50 percent higher than the earnings of those who major in the humanities, the arts, education and psychology. (By Peter Whoriskey)

STYLEAsk Amy: Adults stuck on childhood favoritism Dear Amy:During childhood, my husband’s parents blatantly favored him at the expense of his siblings.For the 25 years we have been married, he, I, and our two children have been the target of his brother’s resentment, acted out at their family’s frequent gatherings. (, Tribune Media Service)

Hints From Heloise: Does tip include alcohol? Dear Heloise: I read the restaurant tipping hint in the Houston Chronicle. The reader suggests doubling the tax as an easy way to figure out the tip. This will work only if you don’t order alcoholic beverages. (Heloise here: This is not the case everywhere and in every situation.) (, King)

Miss Manners: Artist doesn’t want to give away personal information Dear Miss Manners:I live on a disability pension for a condition that is not readily apparent. I also occasionally sell works of art. When I am asked what I “do,” I usually state that I am an artist. Few are willing to leave it at this and persist with comments like “But you certainly can’t pay the rent with THAT!” (, United Media)

Take time to adjust to newly single status Getting divorced, and have reconnected with a 20-years-ago lost love. We’ve hit it off great, but she wants to be neither the rebound nor the transitional person. (, The Washington Post)

December 08, 2009

Josephine Baker, Duke Ellington, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes. The giants of the Harlem Renaissance loom large in “Uptown,” Matthew Rushing’s new work for Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.
But until last year, Mr. Rushing, a veteran dancer who created the
piece, wasn’t aware of the extent of their influence on today’s
culture. “I remember going on YouTube, just researching the Charleston, and
there was a clip where they compared the Charleston to styles of break
dance,” he said. “There’s a connection,” he continued, adding later,
“We are because these people lived and struggled and gave their all as
performers, people, intellects.” That connection is what Mr.
Rushing hopes to communicate with “Uptown,” his first solo creation for
the company, which has its premiere Wednesday night at City Center. Structured
as an episodic tour through Harlem in the 1920s, “Uptown” uses 28
dancers — the entire company except for Mr. Rushing and Renee Robinson,
who helped him in the staging — and tries to bring to life through
dance the rich artistic activity of that era. Along the way, the
audience, led by a narrator, encounters characters both real and
fictional, and scenes — a busy street, a rent party, a night at the
Savoy ballroom— that help introduce major developments in music,
literature, the visual arts and, of course, dance. He initially
came up with the idea while surfing for jazz music online. “I learned
so much that I did not know, to the point that I was almost ashamed,”
Mr. Rushing said. “And then I started to talk to people and they didn’t
know either, and that’s when I realized I needed to do this piece.”

Mr.
Rushing, 36, has choreographed for Ailey before — in 2005 he worked
with two other company dancers, Hope Boykin and Abdur-Rahim Jackson, to
create “Acceptance in Surrender” — but “Uptown” represents a major step
for him in its scale and complex production. It also represents the
company’s continuing efforts to cultivate artists from within,
especially coming as it does in a season of many revivals and just a
few new works by outside choreographers. At the start of 2008 Judith Jamison,
the company’s artistic director, approached Mr. Rushing about
choreographing a piece for this season, planned as a tribute to her 20
years as leader of the company. “I wanted to give him the opportunity
for his singular voice to shine,” Ms. Jamison said in a phone
interview. “Matthew has a sense of theater to me and his piece is like
a review — you get a chance to go on this journey.”

In a
spacious rehearsal studio at the Ailey headquarters on West 55th
Street, three female dancers move in a row to a big band sound. Their
hips sway as they trace half circles sensually with their toes on the
floor; their arms hang heavily above their heads — clinking glasses and
moody nightclub lighting are easy to picture. The studio is crowded
with dancers and an audience of Ailey administrators and supporters,
including Ms. Jamison, who watch attentively as Mr. Rushing, in a gray
hoodie, black sweat pants and bedroom booties, coaches the dancers:
“There are no counts. You have to feel it.”

Mr. Rushing, who has
been called “a fine classicist” and a “virtuoso dancer” by The New York
Times in his 18 years performing with the company, has a sweet, almost
angelic air in person. Sitting, appropriately, in the company’s library
after the rehearsal, he talked about the lengths he went to to
represent the era authentically. SOURCE: NYTIMES.COM

November 19, 2009

Oprah Winfrey plans to end her syndicated television show in September 2011, as she turns her efforts toward a new cable-television channel she plans to launch with Discovery Communications Inc.Ms. Winfrey told her staff of her decision on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the matter. Ms. Winfrey plans to make an official announcement on her talk show Friday morning, according to a spokeswoman.The move is a big blow to the syndicated television market, in which Ms. Winfrey has grown to become a juggernaut. "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which launched in syndication in 1986, attracted 6.6. million viewers for the week ended November 8, according to Nielsen Co. Local television stations, which use Ms. Winfrey to anchor their daytime hours, could also smart from Ms. Winfrey's decision. Her show has been one of the few whose ad rates have held steady in the recession, according to one ad buyer."In our market she does extremely well and always has," said Barry Smith, director of programming and creative services for KFMB-TV, a CBS affiliate in San Diego, Calif., owned by Midwest Television Inc. "It's going to be a task" to replace her, Mr. Smith added.The news was first reported on the Web site of a local ABC station that airs the show, New York's WABC-TV. Ms. Winfrey's decision also represents a hit to CBS Corp., which distributes Ms. Winfrey's show in syndication. "We look forward to working with her for the next several years, and hopefully afterwards as well," the company said in a statement supplied by a spokesman. Ms. Winfrey is likely to turn her attention to her new television network, OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network, which she announced with cable programmer Discovery Communications in January of 2008. The new channel is structured as a 50-50 joint venture between Ms. Winfrey and Discovery, and includes Oprah.com."I will be involved in every single element of programming," Ms. Winfrey said in an interview with the Journal at the time. Since then, the network has seen its launch pushed back. In January, OWN hired former MTV president Christina Norman to be chief executive. She took over from former Viacom Chief Executive and MTV veteran Tom Freston, who has quietly served as a consultant for the network, according to people familiar with the situation. SOURCE OF THIS POST

November 17, 2009

Franco Wicks is the sort of ferociously funny, privately pained character that any rising Hollywood star would love to play — and on Broadway no less, in this fall’s production of "Superior Donuts."Instead Franco is being played, to acclaim, by an actor who is virtually unknown in New York or Los Angeles, Jon Michael Hill. His is one of the few current Broadway play ensembles that lack a big-name star.et among this 24-year-old actor’s colleagues at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, where “Donuts” originated in the summer of 2008, Mr. Hill was an incentive for joining the play, Tracy Letts’s follow-up to his Tony Award-winning “August: Osage County.” “Jon was one reason I said, ‘Count me in,’ ” said Tina Landau, a Steppenwolf ensemble member who directed the play in Chicago and New York. “He’s completely mercurial. He can do everything and its opposite. That’s so exciting to see in a young actor.”

For Mr. Hill, who is making his Broadway debut, the role is an opportunity to play a struggling, young African-American who wants to make his mark in a world where many of his peers are poor, discarded, or maimed by violence. These are young men Mr. Hill sees on the nightly news and knew while growing up in Waukegan, Ill., and whose stories deserve to be heard by an audience, he said. CONTINUE READING..

November 03, 2009

By CHARLES ISHERWOOD ~ NEW HAVEN — Subjugation and corruption are the grim options available
to the women of “Eclipsed,” a new play by Danai Gurira (“In the
Continuum”) at the Yale Repertory Theater
here. Set in 2003 during the Liberian civil war, the play focuses on
four women held captive by the brutal leader of a rebel faction
fighting against the government. Struggling to sustain their hope and humanity in a hopeless
situation, some of them find the courage to ease one another’s
suffering, while others fall under the spell of the violence that has
ravaged the country. Like this year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning
“Ruined” by Lynn Nottage, which is set in Congo, “Eclipsed” depicts the
harsh realities of women’s lives in a strife-torn African country with
both a clear eye and a palpable empathy. Although it is a less
skillfully structured drama — partly because the women here are even
more powerless than the Mother Courage-like dominant figure in Ms.
Nottage’s play — “Eclipsed” presents a complementary, no-less-harrowing
portrait of women fighting to retain their dignity and a sense of
self-worth under extreme duress. Helena (Stacey Sargeant) has
been with the rebels the longest. Abducted when the war first broke out
more than a decade before, she is unsure of her own age, but has been
tending to the “commanding officer” for as long as she can remember.
She has also been taking motherly care of his other “wives.” Through
most of the play the women refer to one another by number, a gesture
both practical — they understand that they are commodities in the
gruesome economy of war — and defensive. Dissociating themselves from
the people they used to be is a way of denying the permanence of their
awful exploitation. Helena is “No. 1”: the first to be
acquired, but no longer the most sexually desired. That dubious honor
has fallen to “No. 3,” Bessie (Pascale Armand), still girlish and vain,
but well into a pregnancy.CONTINUE READING..

June 16, 2009

By Frank Leon Roberts
~ Last night I saw The Wiz. Let me begin by answering the question that's on everyone's mind: "How was Ashanti?" Honestly, she was excellent. I would say that she was slightly better than "good" but less than "fabulous." But one thing is for certain: this was not
the thin-voiced pop singer I've grown accustomed to hearing on the
radio. After listening to that disastrous you-tube clip of “Home" last
week, I was expecting the absolute worst. But I left the theatre a
changed man. Ashanti's vocals were full, powerful, and soaked in deep
Gospel overtones. Though I was not overjoyed by her rendition of “Home”
last night, it was still better than the youtube version. And her
interpretations of “Be a Lion” and “Soon as I Get Home” made up for any
perceived deficiency in the “Home” number. In fact, her rendition of
“Be a Lion” was the best that I have ever heard (I’d actually place it above Stephanie Mills' version, and definitely above Diana Ross’s). As an ensemble cast, The Wiz
is exceptional. Joshua Henry delivers a brilliant portrayal of The
Tinman. His rendition of “What Would I Do If I Could Feel?” (a song
that I never really cared for before) was the best male vocal of the
evening. It nearly brought tears to my eyes. Henry’s voice is saturated
with a deep, dramatic baritone timbre that reminds me of Brian Stokes
Mitchell (or Jesse Martin). James Monroe Iglehart and Orlando Jones
delivered solid performances as The Lion and The Wiz. Christian Dante
White also made a pretty good “Scarecrow” though I was disappointed by
the producer’s decision to stick to the original Broadway score and not
include “You Cant Win” (the memorable track that appears in the film
version ofthe show, written by Quincy Jones .) And
then, of course, there’s Dawnn Lewis, Tichina Arnold, and veteran
Broadway diva LaChanze. Not surprisingly, these three ladies were
brilliant in every imaginable way. LaChanze’s renditions of “The
Feeling We Once Had” and “Believe in Yourself” left shivers down my
spine. Overall, I recommend The Wiz
enthusiastically. Though it is certainly not a perfect production (and
will need to be further revised, expanded and developed if and when it
hits the Broadway mainstage) it left me absolutely satisfied. Go out and buy your tickets today!

May 26, 2009

On a three-week run at The Actors’ Playhouse every Saturday at 10pm, RAW: No More Secrets, No More Lies is the first stage play from On The Down Low author, J.L. King, who set the stage for the DL (down low) discourse with his book and appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. In RAW, King uses the confessions of six naked men to explore the spectrum of DL sexuality, from the music mogul who enjoys cross-dressing, to the heterosexual hustler who is gay for pay. Each has a story of suffering to tell, and as they expose their pain and agony, they expose themselves. Oddly enough, though, despite the gay undertones and the undisputed homosexuality of DL men, this play is billed as “the hottest & only controversial play that speaks truth to women.” What King intended was an in-depth exploration into the DL psyche, explaining why down low men continue to victimize women with irresponsible, dangerous behavior.

December 20, 2008

Excerpt from NYTimes -- The climax of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s 50th-anniversary season, which has emphasized live music, has arrived
in the middle of its run, with two programs whose first two-thirds are
each to music by Duke Ellington. To play these, Wynton Marsalis
(on trumpet) and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra (conducted by
Eric Reed, some 19 musicians in all) occupy the back of City Center’s
stage. It’s a thrill to hear the big-band sound projecting through the
theater. At some moments the brass section comes in like a massive wall
of sound; at others its long chords hang in the air like clouds. Dan
Nimmer (on piano) and Carlos Henriquez (on bass) are marvelous sources
of rhythm. Ellington called his work “American music” rather than jazz,
and throughout these two programs you hear how he took the American
jazz roots of his style and pushed them into aspects of classicism,
European modernism and more. This American-based diversity is
one reason that Ellington was so often the composer to whose scores
Ailey chose to choreograph. Both of these current Ailey-Ellington
programs show the range of styles that Ailey could use. The hip-tilting
jazz dance that is the main idiom of “Night
Creature” (1974) is far
from the controlled, modern-dance adagio of
“Reflections in D” (1962),
even though some of the same steps occur in both. In “Night Creature”
you feel Ailey’s dancers surfing the wave of the music; in
“Reflections” you feel the male soloist rigorously, soberly countering
it. Those two begin Program A. Program B starts with “The
River” (1970). Ailey and Ellington shaped this together; it originally
had its premiere with American Ballet Theater
(the Ailey company dances it without point work), and it is a spectrum
of styles, speeds and tempers. The middle part of each program is the
same: two sections from the choreographer Talley Beatty’s “Road of the
Phoebe Snow” (1959), whose music is by Ellington and Billy Strayhorn; a
duet from “Caravan” (choreographed in 1976 by Louis Falco to music
based on Ellington themes by Michael Kamen);
and single excerpts from three of Ailey’s compositions to Ellington
music: “The Mooche” (1975), “Pas de Duke” (1976) and “Three Black
Kings” (also 1976, to music of that title composed by Ellington and his
son, Mercer). Continue Reading

December 08, 2008

The stars of “Go in Grace” — a new dance piece created for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
by Hope Boykin, a company member — are its musicians, the six female
singers of the a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock. Onstage almost
throughout, they are seen far more than any one of the work’s six
dancers, and are happy to let us know that they too are good movers.
More essentially, they’re good musicians, sometimes singing in close
harmony, sometimes taking turns singing solo, all in a range of
African-American musical idioms that stayed sweet and gentle even when
the subject was anguish.“Go in Grace,” which had its premiere on Friday night at New York
City Center, starts with Sweet Honey slowly walking forward in a line
across the stage. When the dancers enter, we see them as background
(brightly lighted) through the (part-shadowed) foreground of the
singers. Ms. Boykin then gives Sweet Honey a function akin to that of a
Greek chorus. These women are witnesses, confidants, advisers and
changing scenery, as well as the story’s words and music. They also
play percussion, and one does a form of American Sign Language. They’re
at the perimeter of the stage, they huddle around an individual and
with or without the dancers, they form vertical or diagonal lines
across the stage.Meanwhile the dancers tell a story — or
rather illustrate the story that’s being sung — of father, mother,
brother, sister and two neighborhood boys. Nothing here is unusual.
Children grow up; the father (Amos J. Machanic Jr.) and daughter
(Rosalyn Deshauteurs) are close; the son (Matthew Rushing) has a rebel
streak; the father dies. The main interest lies in how music
and dance connect. In one image five singers form a wall, walking
across the stage: their backs are turned on the father in his hour of
pain and need just before death. Yet more memorably, at the end, the
singers and other dancers are a window between the daughter and her
father’s ghost: she feels and sees him as they do not. SOURCE:NYT.COM

October 01, 2008

By BEN BRANTLEY -- The Fates 3, the voluptuous trio that sings a mean backup to daily
events in a place called the House of Light, say that “Vogue is the
official language” of their world. But though the poses of high fashion
figure flamboyantly here, this pronouncement doesn’t begin to do
justice to the richness of the lingo spoken by the characters in “Wig
Out!,” the new play by the astonishing young dramatist Tarell Alvin
McCraney, which opened on Tuesday night at the Vineyard Theater.The outcasts in this gutsy, pulsing portrait of uptown drag queens
and the men who love them have reinvented the world from the ground up
— no, make that from the Garden of Eden onward. These are people with
their own heroic guiding myths — of creation, nation and divinity — and
their own intricate and inviolable rules for what constitutes a home, a
family and a sexual identity.Their talk is replete with the
pop, hip-hop and glamour-goddess references you might expect from folks
who live to dress (and just, as important, walk)
fabulously. And the program for “Wig Out!,” directed by Tina Landau,
includes a glossary to explain argot like to “throw shade” (which means
to diss or derogate).But there are reverberant echoes of Homer, Milton, the Bible, Shakespeare,
vintage Hollywood and homespun American melodrama. Like most writers of
worth, Mr. McCraney, whose “Brothers Size” made the American theater
prick up its ears when it was presented at the Public Theater
last season, is a hard-core linguistic scavenger. And he has blessed
each of his characters with the authority of playwrights who beg,
borrow and steal lustrous words to re-shape the world in their own
images.Though its centerpiece is a competitive drag ball, and
it features the expected extravagant clothes and lip-synching routines,
“Wig Out!” is not a cross-dressing revue or comedy of the sort familiar
to downtown audiences. Instead it is a thorough and original anatomy of
an alternative universe. The backdrop of James Schuette’s set
establishes the tone: it depicts a galaxy exploding out of a mirrored
disco ball.Lest the audience feel lost in space, Mr. McCraney
immediately provides us with an expert set of guides: a sort of
Supremes-meets-Destiny’s-Child Greek chorus called the Fates 3.
Deliciously embodied by Rebecca Naomi Jones, Angela Grovey and McKenzie
Frye (all, for the record, natural-born women), these bouncy earth
goddesses keep the show in motion with a running, annotative narrative,
both spoken and sung.The rhythms of that narrative sometimes
correspond to those of a strut-and-freeze runway walk. (“Always
Movin’/Movin’/Movin’/STOP!,” chant the Fates, as the action onstage
matches the words.) In the opening scene they set the cadences for the
brusque seduction in a subway car of Eric (Andre Holland), an
angel-faced homeboy, by Ms. Nina (a k a Wilson, played by Clifton
Oliver), a bewigged glamazon. SOURCE:NYT.COM

September 19, 2008

EXCERPT FROM NYTIMES: Once in an odd while it happens: You go to a show because of a
single name you’re interested in and you discover a whole world. A year
ago I came across a young dancer, DeWitt Fleming Jr., amid an evening
of tap at Battery Park, and I remember getting happily lost in the
constant changes of his rhythm and the drastic contrasts of his
dynamics.Since then I hadn’t been able to catch up with
his dancing until Monday night, when he and Jared Grimes were M.C.’s
and co-stars for something called Broadway Underground. You had to wait
well over two hours to see Mr. Fleming dance, but it scarcely felt like
an imposition. Broadway Underground, which plays on isolated nights now
and then, is one sweet show: very funny, very happy and underpinned by
superb live music. B. B. King
Blues Club & Grill makes a terrific location for this kind of
event. Nothing was overamplified (people at my table could talk without
having to shout), and the atmosphere felt intimate. Much of this
intimacy emanated from Mr. Grimes and Mr. Fleming, who know how to
clown with each other; how to loosen up the audience (“Shake your
shoulders now!”); how to build a basic climate of comedy; and how to
take a delight in fellow performers that is both tender and teasing.
All their guests shone, from an enchanting 10-year-old tapper (Dario)
and both men’s fathers to two superb singers, a virtuoso break dancer
and a brilliant eight-part semi-jazz band. There wasn’t a moment when
musical rhythm became coarse or tedious.After an intermission,
Mr. Grimes and Mr. Fleming returned wearing, of all unlikely things,
jogging outfits. Mr. Grimes had been the chief source of amusement in
the first half, but now it was Mr. Fleming, whose fixed grin and
gleaming eyes made him the more ludicrously hilarious of two aerobics
instructors. (“Are you guys ready to burn? African dance is a very good
workout, guys!”)During this half of the show, they welcomed all
manner of volunteers onto the stage — aerobicists, break dancers,
tappers, singers — and the wonder is that each one was good, easily
becoming part of the glowing, comic musical world before us. I pay
every tribute to the musicians. (The violinist turned out also to be a
really charming tap dancer.) In particular, the lead drummers, a
keyboardist and a guitarist made the whole show’s fabric enthralling. SOURCE:NYT.COM

September 14, 2008

When Kevin McKenzie, artistic director of the American Ballet Theatre
Company (ABT), called Misty Copeland into his office in August last
year and told her she had been promoted to soloist, she did not respond
with the outpouring of tears she had always envisioned. “I was in
shock,” says the prodigy from San Pedro, Calif. “It wasn’t until I
spoke to Susan that I cried. She asked me if I knew what this meant for
generations of African-Americans to come.” The Susan she is
referring to is her sponsor: ABT Vice Chair of the Board of Governing
Trustees and self-professed ballet groupie Susan Fales-Hill, who gets
emotional when talking about Copeland, whom she considers a second
daughter. “When Misty became a soloist, the heavens opened,”
Fales-Hill effuses over lunch, rather resembling a ballerina herself.
“It was enormous. It was almost as big as Barack Obama getting the
Democratic presidential nomination—almost. It’s knowing that the world
has changed, that fairness exists, and that we are learning to look
beyond superficial differences.” An author and television
writer/producer (A Different World, The Cosby Show), Fales-Hill spent
her childhood living in New York and Europe with her parents. (As a
result, she speaks four languages.) Her father, Timothy Fales, a member
of a prominent New England family, and her mother, Josephine Premice,
an accomplished Broadway dancer who performed at Carnegie Hall in 1943
at the age of 17, were one of the most dazzling and dynamic couples of
their time. Fales-Hill grew up surrounded by dance icons like Debbie
Allen, Janet Collins, and Arthur Mitchell. “I’ve always loved
all forms of dance, but I gravitated to ballet,” says Fales-Hill. “The
striving toward excellence is almost spiritual to me.” In Copeland,
whom she met at an ABT gala three years ago, Fales-Hill found not only
an extraordinarily poised young woman, but “a rare talent, the sort who
comes around only every 10 years or so.” In Fales-Hill, Copeland found
an advocate and a mentor. “When Susan came into my life, I was having a
hard time, not sure if I would make it past the corps to soloist,” Copeland explains. “You don’t get a lot of feedback, and they don’t want you to get your hopes up.”SOURCE:UPTOWNLIFE.NET

September 07, 2008

Broadway dynamo Billy Porterand Grammy nominated wunderkind Ledisi marked
their respective debuts this week with a revival of the 1990 Tony Award
nominated musical, 'Once on This Island,' at UCLA's Freud Playhouse.Presented
by the Reprise Theatre Company, the show – an Caribbean spiced
retelling of the fairy tale 'The Little Mermaid' with a splash of
Shakespeare's 'Romeo and Juliet' – only plays a very limited 16
performances, until September 14."'Once on This Island' is a study in contrasts: rich versus poor,
immortal versus mortal, light versus dark, life versus death," shared
Porter, a powerhouse performer who recently got his directing feet wet
with an ambitious Afro-centric musical revue based on the songs of Stephen Sondheim."We
have taken what many think are disparate elements – hip-hop/soul,
gospel, jazz, musical theater, pop, and blues - and like the play
itself, we are bringing them together to tell the story," he continued.And as can be expected, the mainstream critics are dazzled.Terry Morgan of 'Variety' magazine raved that it's "generally successful, an entertaining evening with moments of undeniable power."'Los Angeles Times' critic David Ng used superlatives such as "vivacious," and "exotic" throughout his terrific review.The original 1990 show, which played 469 performances at Broadway's Booth Theatre, featured Lillias White and James Stovall, and made a star out of LaChanze (who later went on to win a Tony Award for 'Oprah Winfrey Presents The Color Purple').Ledisi, who was nominated for two Grammy Awards and starred in the George Clooney movie, 'Leatherheads' earlier this year, told BlackVoices.com that Porter reminded her that she was more then a singer."This has been one of the most challenging exciting experiences of my
life," she gushed. "I love this cast, the producers and my director."Porter, along with choreographer Bradley Rapier, have assembled a cast which includes many Broadway and American regional theater vets, including Yvette Cason, Vanita Harbour, Jesse Nager, Leslie Odom Jr., and Nita Whitaker. Newcomer Kristolyn Lloyd plays Ti Moune.SOURCE:BLACKVOICES.COM

September 02, 2008

Leslie Uggams
and Yaya DaCosta are sharing a shaded park bench and talking to each
other — something the two actresses never once do during the more than
two hours that they share the stage in the Signature Theater Company’s
production of “The First Breeze of Summer.”In that revival of Leslie Lee’s autobiographical play from 1975,
both women play the same character — Lucretia — but at very different
points in her life. Ms. DaCosta is a 17-year-old in the bewildering
embrace of desire, while Ms. Uggams is her future self, tired and
ailing but at peace.The actresses’ simultaneous presence onstage
— something that was not done in the original version — underscores the
tangle of naïveté and experience, actions and consequences that
accumulates across time. The play depicts the generational tensions
that pull at a close-knit, working-class African-American family.Both
performers — one an enduring star whose career spans 50 years, the
other making her professional theatrical debut — have won plaudits for
capturing this difficult blend. Ben Brantley in The New York Times
praised Ms. Uggams’s “subtle, contradiction-embracing portrayal” and
Ms. DaCosta’s “exquisite form.”He added that “the double portrait of Lucretia provided by Ms. Uggams and Ms. DaCosta remains sharp” through the end.At
recent performances standing-room-only patrons have lined the aisles
like planters, and the run has been extended until Oct. 5. As the
two women, both dressed in black and white, sat side by side on a
recent sun-washed afternoon, one could see the theme of change and
continuity playing out in their own lives. “She reminds me a
lot of myself,” Ms. Uggams said after Ms. DaCosta admitted that she was
“slightly overwhelmed” by the prospect of sharing the stage with
veterans like her. “My first play was ‘Hallelujah, Baby!’ I thought,
‘Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.’ ”Of course, by that point
Ms. Uggams was already a television and singing star, having first
appeared on the series “Beulah” in the early 1950s, at age 6. Her 1968 Tony Award
for “Hallelujah, Baby!” was just one highlight in a career that
includes her own television variety series (the first hosted by a black
woman), concerts and a memorable performance as Kizzy in the
groundbreaking 1977 mini-series “Roots.”SOURCE:NYT.COM

August 17, 2008

The shrine took shape between rehearsals, with statuettes and bottles
of water and palm wine laid on the side of the stage. In Yoruba and
English it was proclaimed that the honoree, who had died one day short
of 11 years before, remained in spirit. But this impromptu blessing last Friday for “Fela!,” a new Off
Broadway musical, did not truly become a tribute to the show’s namesake
— the Nigerian bandleader and political gadfly Fela Anikulapo Kuti —
until the band kicked in and the 20-odd members of the cast and crew
took the stage and gave themselves over to spontaneous dance. Mr.
Kuti, who died of AIDS in 1997 at 58, was the king of Afrobeat, a musky
hybrid of African rhythms and American jazz and funk, and his songs —
15, 20, 40 minutes long — have coaxed many feet to the dance floor.
Defiant and irreverent in politics, he also used his music and fame to
denounce corruption and ridicule those he called the world’s “vagabonds
in power.” That he was repeatedly jailed and beaten for his opposition
only quickened his route to becoming a modern African folk hero. All of that makes him a perfect subject for Bill T. Jones,
the political lion of modern dance who is the director and
choreographer of “Fela!,” which began previews on Tuesday at 37 Arts,
on West 37th Street in Manhattan, and opens on Sept. 4 for a
two-and-a-half-week engagement. “The Fela Kuti project dropped
from the sky,” Mr. Jones, 56, said. “I didn’t know I was looking for
such a thing, but it’s rooted in the big questions of my life,
questions like creativity, transgression, rebellion, sensuality,
history, race, power. And there’s something about the man that calls
out for a very poetic treatment. His life is so mythic in its scale.” “Fela!”
is both a homage to Mr. Kuti’s creativity and a study of his persona,
and it combines rump-shaking musical numbers with political monologues
and supernatural plot twists. It features Sahr Ngaujah in the title
role, a team of 13 dancers and a crack 10-piece band with members of
Antibalas, a Brooklyn group that has made a name for itself as one of
the premier recreators of Mr. Kuti’s music. SOURCE:NYT.COM

May 31, 2008

THE TONY AWARD NOMINATIONS ARE IN CHECK OUT THIS YEAR'S NOMINATIONS. AND YOU ALSO VOTE THIS YEAR WITH AN INTERACTIVE BALLOT. SPONSORED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES ALSO WITH REVIEWS ON EACH TONY AWARD NOMINATION. CHECK OUT THE COMPLETE LIST OF NOMINEES BELOW:SOURCE: NYTIMES.COM

May 26, 2008

Guess who's coming to Broadway? Nelson Mandela. And the South African civil rights icon wont be coming to sit in for the show – he will be the show. A
new musical about the South African struggle for freedom from apartheid
and the leaders of that movement will be based in part on a forthcoming
memoir by his daughter Zindzi Mandela, assisted by South African theater veteran Welcome Msomi. According to theater press czar John Barlow, the production is projected to hit Broadway in May 2010. "We're
delighted to be part of this thrilling project. The South African story
is not only inspiring but also deeply dramatic and lends itself
perfectly to musical adaptation" said producer Steven Baruch on behalf of his partners, Marc Routh, Richard Frankel and Thomas Viertel. "Great
musicals always begin with the same element -- a great story," he
continued. "We're extremely proud to be bringing this particular great
story to the Broadway musical stage." "I think it's the right time
for the story to be told, and [the] idea to take the story to the
musical stage is exciting," said Zindzi Mandela. "The freedom songs
were so important to the morale of the people," she continued, "so it's
natural for the story to be told with music as a cornerstone."The book recounts touching anecdotes from Zindzi Mandela's youth, as
she grew up during South African apartheid as the daughter of Nelson
Mandela and Winnie Mandela. SOURCE: BLACKVOICES.COM

September 2012

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